World Junior Champion P Harikrishna was outdone by top seed Grandmaster Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine in the first game of the two-game semifinal at Lausanne Young Masters International Chess tournament in Switzerland.
With one down in the two-game mini match, Harikrishna faces a tall task of winning the return game in order to force a tiebreak in which games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.
It was a bad day for other two junior world champions in the fray as well.
GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan was convincingly beaten by United States champion Hikaru Nakamura in the other semifinal of the day and former girls world junior champion Nana Dzagnidze was outsmarted by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the clash for 5-8 places in this unique knockout event.
Another important game of the day was a draw between Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Elisabeth Paehtz of Germany.
Harikrishna looked out-of-sorts against Volokitin. The Indian has been displaying high quality chess in the past few months. The pressure eventually got to him against the Ukrainian, who had a smooth sailing here so far.
Playing black in the opening game, Harikrishna started off with a side variation of the Petroff defense, counting on his defensive skills, but was surprised by the way Volokitin handled the on board problems.
From the start, Volokitin played sharply and launched a king side offense and just while Harikrishna trained his sights for a possible counter attack, he was quick to spot a better endgame.
Ruthlessly going for the trade of queens, Volokitin thereafter forced a couple of more exchanges to convert to a clearly superior Rook and Bishops endgame where after trading the rooks Harikrishna found no point in continuing. The game lasted 41 moves.
If Volokitin showcased his brilliant all round abilities, Nakamura was not far behind either.
In recent times Mamedyarov has emerged as one of the most consistent junior player of the world but against Nakamura he was only a pale shadow of himself.
Starting off with the English opening, Nakamura was only pleased to see a Sicilian Defense on the board with colours reversed and attained a slightly better middle game in quick time.
That Mamedyarov was simply not himself was further attested on the 13th move itself as the Azerbaijani misjudged in his calculations and went for a continuation, leading to a nearly lost endgame. It took just 39 moves for Nakamura to complete the rituals.
14-year-old Vachier-Lagrave came out of his blues with a hard earned victory over Dzagnidze. After two losses against Mamedyarov in the first round of the event the moral boosting effort was quite impressive as he outplayed the Georgian in all departments of the game.
The Caro-Kann Advance saw Dzagnidze in some trouble and she found solace in getting three pieces against double rooks. However, in the ensuing endgame Lagrave converted his material advantage in to a full point after 72 moves.
Carlsen, white, could not make most of his opportunities against Paehtz and was held to a draw in a Sicilian Defense game.
The German did well to keep the balance ticking right through the game and subsequent exchanges led a draw.
Results
Semifinals game 1:
Andrei Volokitn (Ukr) beat P Harikrishna (Ind); Hikaru Nakamura (USA) beat Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze)
5-8 place game 1:
Magnus Carlsen (Nor) drew with Elisabeth Paehtz (Ger); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra) beat Nana Dzagnidze (Geo).
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